Day 12: An Ability of Yours

I'm grateful for the newfound ability to be a homeschool teacher.  There were lots of questions at the beginning of last school year, but definitely one of them was, "Can I even do this?"  Homeschooling is a much bigger business than it was when I was growing up, and has especially boomed with the pandemic, so there are a lot of resources and curriculums to help parents, many of them free or very low cost.  No one has to take this on from scratch.  Nevertheless, it's daunting to take on the rule of teacher for your kids.

I do not have the personality to command a room of 30 kids, either by hilarious banter or magnetic presence.  I'm not great at managing difficult behaviors.  I would be a disaster as a classroom teacher.  I was never the kid who lined up my stuffed animals and taught them a lesson, with dreams of someday teaching a classroom full of kids.  I was much more the kid with my nose always in a book.

Fortunately, that personality works great for homeschool!  (And so do many other personality types - "you do you" is never more true than in the world of homeschool.)  The style of homeschool we do for many of our subjects is to read together and then talk about it, or go out and find it (science).  We are all learning together.  I love reading, and talking about reading, and learning new things - so this particular style of teaching is a pleasure and a natural fit.  I'm really grateful that the one little corner of the teaching world that works well for me is precisely the corner where I've landed.

Day 11: A Food You Love

Today I'm grateful for two new culinary experiences Kenny introduced me to - they are linked in my mind because they happened in the same year.  The first is sushi.  Growing up in Nebraska in the 80s and 90s, there were no sushi restaurants, and I probably couldn't have told you what sushi was.  Even living on the coast in college, while there probably was sushi available, I never tried it and I don't remember it being a regular thing for anyone I knew.  So my first time eating sushi ended up being takeout, on the beach, in Wilmington, North Carolina, at age 24.  Kenny and I were dating and he got this as lunch for us.  I was so excited to try something new and was amazed how delicious raw fish could taste.  It's hilarious to think back on how this worked out because I've been to the beach hundreds of times since then, and had sushi maybe also a hundred times since, but never again have the two things come together.  Which makes it an extra special memory.  (And it got me ready for all you can eat sushi, which is a Reno staple.)

The second new culinary experience is dim sum.  Technically I had dim sum once before with friends in New York, but it was a basically unknown cuisine to me at that point.  Kenny and I lived in Oakland for our newlywed summer, which is also where his paternal grandparents lived.  About once a week, we met them in Oakland Chinatown for either a dinner meal or dim sum.  Kenny's grandparents were so kind and generous to this girl from the Midwest who didn't have the first clue what each thing was or how to use chopsticks.  I remember trying to pick up a square gelatin item and it just kept slipping out, and Kenny's grandma showed me how to just stab it in the middle with the chopstick, which was both funny and a relief.  I'm grateful for how a meal can be such a warm and welcoming introduction to someone's family and culture.

Day 10: A Family Member

 I am so grateful for my dad, for so many reasons. I'm grateful how he bonded with us in the early years through sports - teaching all four of us kids (both boys and girls) how to throw a spiral on a football and run a chair pattern, how to use the correct footwork when boxing out on a basketball rebound, and how to watch the ball into the glove when playing catch.  I'm grateful for so many memories of his singing songs in the car and in the house - my knowledge of 1980s church music, golden oldies, and classic country is all deeper due to him.  

I'm grateful for his enthusiasm in planning family vacations; for how he took us to see the Minnesota Twins (and would sometimes end bedtime with the phrase "no smoking in the Metrodome"); and for how much he loves sitting on the rocks near the Oregon beach and watching the waves crash in.  I'm grateful that he has a great sense of humor and an eagerness to try new things.

I'm grateful how he's always been there for me.  In the midst of a demanding work life, he was always there for sports games and track meets and music concerts, and not just there but actively involved :).  I'm grateful that he was involved in two big moments in my life, officiating at my wedding and swearing me into the bar.  He was there for us when Joshua was born, flying out to Salt Lake City to support us, and then helping us drive across the country when we were traveling with two dogs and infant and a trunk full of oxygen canisters.  

I'm grateful that he treats my mom with love, kindness, and respect, giving me a good example of what I should look for in a husband. 

I'm grateful that he's been a role model to me throughout my life in so many ways - in his career, he has been highly successful as a judge, but always made time to give back to the community in various ways.  He has prioritized his faith.  He is a person of integrity, he cares very much about the marginalized and outsider, and he has a really amazing combination of strength and tenderness.  I'm so grateful for my dad.

Day 9: Something You Like About Where you Live

Ascension

I love so many things about where we live - I love the size of Reno and how the character is a mix of cowboy independence and California; I LOVE the geography, and how we get to enjoy both the dessert and the mountains; I love our nearby alpine lakes and our local junior ski program; I love our church; I love so many of the people here.

The year a balloon landed right in front of our house!

But to choose a new one today - I'm grateful for my favorite annual Reno event, the Great Reno Balloon Races.  This is a hot air balloon festival that happens for three days every September.  It takes place at a park near our house, so even on the days we don't attend, we can usually see some of it from our driveway (and once had a balloon land in our cul de sac!).  

The events start at 5 am, so you wake up and leave the house while it's still dark, and then you use flashlights to find your way through the parking lot, then through the trees, and down to the field - the dark makes it feel like an adventure. If you get there early enough, you get to see some of the balloons lift up in the dark and glow like little moons.  They start the main event around sunrise - 100+ balloons blow up in a giant field and then ascend.  They let the spectators walk around the field, so you are right in the middle of the action, surrounded by an explosion of color and the sound of blowtorches going on and off and people looking up to the sky in wonder.  

I'm so grateful for this annual event that's a thrill for kids and and adults alike.  

 

Day 8: A Happy Memory

For today's prompt, I'm choosing a seasonal memory - the Big Bang Boom 4th of July celebrations!  I grew up in a small town of about 20,000 people in northeast Nebraska.  Small Midwestern towns often do 4th of July celebrations in a big way.  There's an all day festival with bands and food and maybe mud volleyball that was watered down by a firetruck.  There are people shooting off all manner of fireworks at all hours of the day.  (I remember my brother and his friend putting on garden gloves and goggles and having a bottle rocket war.)  

And then the big highlight of the day is the professional fireworks show at night, which the whole town attends.  (And all the neighboring townsfolk  - believe it or not, we were the "hub" town in that area, with the mall and the movie theaters and the bowling alley - most towns in rural Nebraska are under a thousand, separated by miles of farmland in between.)  The fireworks show takes place over Skyview Lake, and we happened to live right across the street, so my parents often invited people over to watch with us.  

One year, they went all out and hired a band to play in their backyard.  I have the happiest memory of hanging around with my friends at this party, on a high of summer and grilled hamburgers and fireworks all day, and watching my musical, extroverted dad step in with the band for a few songs as the singer.  Then, as the sun went down, everyone getting blankets and lawn chairs turned toward the lake, and turning up the radio so we could hear the music that went along with the show.  Everyone "oohed" and "aahed" as the sky lit up, and held their breaths through the spectacular grand finale.   

I was not big on fireworks as a kid.  I was not one who would save up hundreds of dollars, buy up a whole stand, and blow up everything in sight all through the month of June.  I was more the type questioning (mostly in my head) spending that much dough on things that literally blow up in seconds when there are starving people in Africa - the fun one at the party!  

But now that I live in the west, where fireworks are much more limited and regulated due to the wildfire danger, I appreciate what a joy fireworks bring to a 4th of July celebration - both the driveway kind and the professional show kind.  And now that I'm older, I realize how much we all need these moments of celebration and joy.  I'm grateful that I got to grow up with a Big Bang Boom of a 4th of July, and grateful that we often get to return to Nebraska in July to do Independence Day Midwest style.  

Day 7: Something that Makes you Smile

Josh reading to Bear

Something that makes me smile is the way Bear (our pug) zooms around the house after he takes a bath.  There's something about baths that revs his energy up to one hundred percent and causes him to run laps around the house full speed.  It's funny how his eyes go crazy, how he skids a bit on the turns, and how he's kind of being funny but kind of being totally serious.  Pugs have the reputation for sleeping a lot, and they do, but they also have very big personalities and very high energy moments, and Bear does things every day that make me laugh.  I'm so grateful for our little pup.  

Day 6: A Smell You Love

I am so grateful for the smells associated with books!  First and foremost, of course, is the smell of a book itself.  Every book lover knows the feeling of burying their nose into a new book and inhaling the aroma, as part of the anticipation and enjoyment of the book reading experience.  Second, I like the musty smell of a used book store, in the kind of store that's built like a maze and has books packed into every nook and cranny, and probably a cat or two wandering around.  I like thinking about the lives the books have lived before they made it to this store, and then thinking about the life the bookstore owner lived that got him or her to this point, and then going home with a stack of amazing books for a bargain price.  Third, I like thinking about other smells that go along with favorite reading times and places - coffee with a morning read, salty ocean air from a beach read, even the gas station snack smell (specifically, my brother eating Funions) as I read in the minivan on family vacations.  Like songs, I'm so grateful how a smell can bring you right back to a time and place.  

Day 5: A Friend

Today I'm writing about a person who might not want their name on the blog, tiny as the audience is, so I'm going to keep it a little more general than usual.  I met this person as part of raising kids, and didn't at all expect it to turn into a friendship.  It's hard to make friends in your 30s and 40s, with life being so busy and people already having friends in place, so it feels like such an unexpected blessing when a new friend comes into your life in this stage.  This person has been a source of inspiration, ideas, support, and laughs. She's shown me new books and new music that are now favorites.  She gives me new nature and adventure ideas.  But most of all, there's something about our personalities that sees the world in a similar way - and what a gift that is, at any time in life, to find someone with mutual understanding, who you feel like they really get what you're saying.  I'm grateful for this friendship.  

Day 4: An Accomplishment of Yours

Depoe Bay, OR

An accomplishment I'm grateful for is learning to camp with the kids.  I went camping a few times growing up, and several times as a young adult, but I was always a tag along.  I never had to reserve the site, set up the tent, plan the food, start the fire, or figure out what to do about bears and bathrooms and bad weather.  Let alone, do all these things with kids.  For the first ten years with kids, this seemed like too high of a bar to clear, and I never attempted it.  But - I love being in nature, and camping is a huge part of summer life in northern Nevada (where we are fortunate to have the Sierra Nevadas next door, cool nights / mornings, and barely any bugs).  Also, there are amazing memories to be made with sunset lake swims and bonfire S'mores and flashlight tag and ghost stories in tents.  So two years ago, we acquired the supplies and gave camping a go.  

Our first attempt was a fail - it was a wind advisory day, which is challenging for the most seasoned tent campers.  After setting up the tent and then watching it blow over like a tumbleweed, I called it - we ended up packing up and heading home before we even got to S'mores.  It was tempting at that point to throw in the towel and just say that camping is not for us, we are more of a day outing family.  But we got a second attempt that summer, with a lot of help from my brother Eric, and in a location that was impossible to turn down - in an isolated cove next to the ocean, complete with tide pools and star fish and seals and sea lions, along the Oregon coast - and that attempt was a success.  It felt great to wake up so close to the ocean, and it felt even better to overcome a failure.  Last summer, we camped a couple times with friends, with exactly the forever memories I hoped for.  And this week, we're getting ready to camp again.  I'm still fairly scared of  lighting the camp stove, and of running into bears in the night, and about keeping meat cool enough to be safe to eat - but with each successful camp, it gets more fun and less scary.  I'm grateful that we now get to call ourselves campers!

Day 3: A Song You Love

A song I'm grateful for is "Sorry Signs on Cash Machines" by Mason Jennings.  I learned about this folk singer when I was living in Colorado and continued to listen to him a lot in law school, right at the same time that Kenny and I were dating.  We saw Mason Jennings in concert in Cary, North Carolina together, and this is one of the songs he played.  There's something about music that can bring back you to a time and place so powerfully.  All Mason Jennings songs makes me think of that time in my life, but this song in particular reminds me of young love with Kenny, which is such a sweet set of memories.  

Day 2: What You Find Beautiful

 I am grateful for the green of the desert this spring.  Usually, even in the spring months where most of the country is getting April showers and May flowers, Reno stays pretty sunny and dry.  Though we do get a desert bloom each year, which I also find beautiful, it's not often that Reno is looking like Ireland.  But this spring (continuing with the crazy precipitation pattern of the entire year), we've had tons of rain, and plants are growing wild and free all around.  I'm so grateful for the sights and smells of this green sensory wonderland.  

30 days of gratitude: summer 2023 edition

 

I'm going to start up another round of daily gratitude posts!  This is an exercise I've done not quite annually, but I find it helpful every time I do it.  Now that we homeschool, summer is the best time to commit to a daily writing project, so I'm doing the gratitude posts as a summer vacation exercise!  Since summer also includes many days and weeks out of the house, my goal is to complete one of these every couple days and complete the list of 30 by the end of summer.  As always, I would love for people to follow along on their own or by message - the full list I will use is posted above.

Day 1:  About my Body

I'm going to be liberal with modifying the topic this time around - for today, I'm going to write something I'm grateful for about the human body.  Today, June 15th, is an anniversary for two of Josh's surgeries.  Twelve years ago he had a jaw distraction, and six years ago, he had a hernia repair.  The jaw distraction was a much bigger deal - there were days in the PICU, morphine for the pain, and a very involved healing process.  So where's the gratitude in this?  It's amazing to watch how the human body is designed to heal, even from a fairly major invasion.  Surgeries involve cuts on the outside and more cuts and procedures on the inside when everything goes exactly right - and our bodies are designed to withstand this invasion and repair.  Josh's big jaw surgery is premised on the fact that the body will heal:  when there is a cut in the bone, the bone repairs itself by growing more bone - what a thing!  Think of the difference in our quantity and quality of life if our bodies couldn't heal from most cuts, many sicknesses, and even some major medical events.  As I write this, I'm aware of so many in my life who are struggling through their own or a loved one's chronic sickness, pain, and disability, and I want to be sensitive to the pain of this and how this post might be tone deaf.  For those, I'm sorry and that I would love to pray for you.

Reno Tahoe Odyssey

My RTO team, "Emergency Landing"

This weekend, I completed my first Reno Tahoe Odyssey ("RTO")! The RTO is a 12 person relay race in which you travel 178 miles from Reno, up through the mountains and around Lake Tahoe, down to Carson City, up to Virginia City, and end up back down in Reno.  All of this takes around 30 hours from start to finish.  The experience is kind of like an endurance race, a road trip, a camping trip, and a quest rolled into one.   I'm going to write up the play by play to give you an idea what it's like.

A Day(s) at the RTO:

9:15 am - My team met at the starting line in downtown Reno to send off the first runner, then my half of the group ("Van 2") went back to a house to decorate and load up our van, as our team's legs didn't start until the afternoon.  For those who have run races before, it feels strange to wake up all psyched to run a race and then have most of the day ahead of you before you actually start running.  After lunch, our van set off.

2:30 pm - This is when Van 2's first active section began.  When your van is on, you are either running, driving, navigating, cheering, getting ready to run, or recovering from running.  Each active section lasts for around 5 hours.  

4:30 pm - Because I was runner #10 out of 12, this is when I ran my first leg.  I ran my first 5 miles through Squaw Valley, along the Truckee River and up in the mountains near Tahoe.  This has got to be one of the most beautiful places in the entire world and it felt amazing to be out running in such a beautiful spot.  Your legs are still fresh on the first leg and you feel happy to be alive and up in Tahoe and part of it all.  The first run also helps get the nerves out and makes you feel like things are really underway.

5:20 pm - I finished my first leg and realized that I was sweaty and there was no place to shower and I would be sitting in a van with people for the next dozens of hours - so you figure out how to get cleaned up on the fly with baby wipes.  Everyone brings several changes of clothes to stay clean and deal with the changing weather.  There is also not time to stop and eat restaurant food, so you bring what you want to eat in the car - lots of nutrition bars, fruit, bagels with peanut butter - that kind of thing.  

7:30 pm - My van all finished their first legs, and we drove on to try to find a place to nap until our next round of running.  The sun was setting over Emerald Bay at this point, and the moon was huge, and we got to drive around a stunning vista as we made our way to the next exchange point at South Lake Tahoe.  We stopped in a strip mall in town and laid out our sleeping bags on some grass to try to sleep for a couple hours.  Everyone walking by had comments and jokes, and many thought it was funny to tell us the sprinklers were about to go off.  At one point, someone in a jeep drove back and forth blasting ice cream truck music, presumably to mock us?  Not a lot of sleep happening.   At 11: 15, we roll up the sleeping bags and hit the road again.

1:30 am - My turn to run my second leg, which was 6 miles in Genoa.  Everyone has at least one middle of the night run, which is what causes many of us (definitely myself included) to pause before signing up for this race.  It sounds exhausting and scary and a little crazy.  But actually, this was my favorite leg, because it's so unlike any run I've ever done before: out under the huge night sky, feeling small under the stars, feeling a little mad from sleep deprivation, enjoying the bluegrass music and the peaceful highway and the cows mooing at 2 am.  The air is so nice and cool.  I never would've guessed it, but the middle of the night run is a highlight of this race.

3:45 am - My van finished their second active portion and drove on to Virginia City for 3 more attempted hours of sleep.  We found a parking lot and laid out our sleeping bags there.  Still not super comfortable, but it was much quieter than the last napping spot, and we were more exhausted after 11 miles of running.  Got some actual sleep here, then woke for the sunrise and final active portion.  

8:30 am - My final run was 5 miles in the suburbs of South Reno.  At this point, everyone is sleep deprived and has put at least 10 challenging miles on their legs, and the sun is coming back up and the heat is rising.  This is the Let's-See-What-You're-Made-Of leg.  The one and only thing that's fun about it is that you have to rise to the challenge of making it through - and that IS actually super fun, especially that moment where you tag the next runner and see that you've done the thing you weren't sure you could do.

11:50 pm - Finish line!  All twelve runners back together to run the last few steps through the arch together, then photos and hugs.  Then home for showers and food and sleep!

(pic) Questions I Had Before the Race:

• How does this compare to a half marathon?  This really depends on which runner you are.  My legs were pretty flat, and although it was 16 combined miles, they were broken up so much that it felt easier.  I had wondered if sitting around in a van would make our legs get stiff and sore, but the extra time to rest and stretch and fuel / hydrate was more of a help than a hindrance.  If you had one of the really challenging legs with huge uphills and downhills, I imagine the answer might be different.
• Would I enjoy this if I'm not a runner?  There is a lot more to this race than just the running part - the team aspect, the celebratory feel of all the exchange points, the puzzle of figuring out where you're going next and when to get there and when and how to sleep - but at the heart of it is still running.  To do this race right, you should train similar to preparing for a half marathon with hills, which is a lot of running.  And if you don't train, this is going to be a super hard and painful experience.  You don't have to "be" a runner (whatever that means), but you should pose as one for the months leading up to it if you want this race to be enjoyable.  
• That's a lot of time with people - would I like this if I'm an introvert?  I'm an introvert, as were many in my van.  It's not a bunch of draining small talk.  It's more like being on a mission together and figuring things out as you go, which I think can be fun for introverts and extroverts alike, and when you're not busy doing that, you're trying to grab some sleep.  
• How do you feel the next day?  A little sore.  A lot tired.  Extremely happy that you did it and get to have the memory of this amazing experience forever.

If this sounds fun at all, you should do it!  Shout out to our captain Megan, for putting together a great team to run and travel with!